


Lifetaker

by Teceraca



Series: Robin Drabbles [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Gen, Patricide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teceraca/pseuds/Teceraca
Summary: Robin explores her emotions, and lack thereof, during the final face-off with her father.
Series: Robin Drabbles [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609078
Kudos: 7





	Lifetaker

The barrier around the dragon table drops, and Robin can feel it - the power of invisible bonds. Bonds carrying camaraderie and love overpower those of magic and blood. Her father had not only meant to seal away the physical support of her army, but to isolate her within the will of his influence. 

Heh. No longer.

The craven warps from her first attack, gathering himself after a bewildering turnaround. She has reclaimed her fate, and no doubt remains for what she knows must be done and has the power to do. 

Validar will fall today.

She feels nothing, which must have been part of what he taught her. No emotions block her calculations as she watches to anticipate moves; takes note of every detail of enemy movements while closing in.

She _starts_ to feel when the contours of his face are so close they map out memories too distant to see clearly, but twinge at her heart as something she might not want to recall after all. Wisps in her memory merge with the present moment as everything swirls together in blurred colors of sand and sky and blurred morals of black and gray. Her eyes redden with bloodlust, focused solely on wiping these feelings away, on erasing what stands in her way.

The idea of peace for Ylisse fades merely into the backdrop of intentions. She only sees people and lands and how he seeks to destroy them. The person before her is not a father but an **enemy** \- to her and to all mankind!

It is her p l e a s u r e to eliminate him. 

Already she's outsmarted him, raring to overpower him. A grim mistake had been ever teaching her the way of the sword. What sorcerer stood a change against a blade on his own? She reaches melee range, and there is naught he can do, nor armor to shield him. Robin doesn’t hesitate, and Validar doesn’t even deign to cry out. 

Steel pierces through fabric and flesh, past skin, past ribs, into organs. It impales to rend away just enough of too many vital points to save. Crimson oozes to soak through robes. An incense all too familiar bursts from them in the scuffle to fill her nose. If Robin had any less sense she’d pull out her weapon and slam it into him anew to make more broken craters in his body and splash as much blood as she could in a delightful dance of droplets. Oh, if she could splatter every bit of him as _messy_ as her memory and the emotions evoked just standing near him; poke as many holes in him as she carries in her past; turn him inside out just as she does with the legacy he’d tried to saddle her with...!

Instead, she jams further and digs around deeper with the single thrust, growling in righteous fury against his claw-like hands around her neck. They sear with dark magic while Validar only laughs in a deep, derisive chuckle which begins to gargle as ichor drains into lungs. Twintails shake to maintain Robin’s resolve even while her head and chest burn, consuming her in acute misery, and grating at her skin more than any Plegian sun or sand.

She angles the attack every which way, doing as much damnable damage as possible, cursing him with weapon rather than words. Grunting tears into a full war cry from her throat to carry above the rest of the battle and echo in the chamber ceilings! If only the twisting of her hilt could reel at his intestines that they would loop around his heart and pull it right out in a contorted conglomerate of all his insides. Then he’d be an empty vessel too.

Empty and unable to hurt anyone ever again.

But he ceases his struggle, and she can’t tell if it’s because his strength is waning or if he’s found some sort of solace in the coming of death. He still laughs at her, blood spitting from his lips and onto her forehead with a particular snicker as he looks into her hate-burned expression. “I’m… so proud…” He falls just as she wanted, but as he goes limp upon her sword, her brilliant brain tries to comprehend what could make that his last statement. Fury drains from her eyes and from her face, and the will to hold his dead weight upon her sword releases to let them both drop to the ground. 

Glancing towards Chrom - who had only looked on, knowing this was her fight - he offers a solemn nod back. Yet the more she fights for what she believes is right, the more she kills for it, she questions whether she deserves such affirmation from her greatest hero. The finish tape in the war for humanity seems further and further away. 

She’d somehow gotten approval from _both_ of them for this act…?

She always considered there were two types of fighters. Those who wanted power, and those who wanted to protect. But more and more she realizes that intent doesn’t change what a monster, what a _life-taker_ does. Nothing could speak better to that fact than the immediate soothing of tingles washing over Robin's body as whatever energy is left of her victim's essence drains to join with her aura instead. She should feel terrible after committing this atrocity, not better.

Looking again from Validar’s corpse, and to the rest of the Shepherds battling the last of his resistance, she knows she is not empty, nor emotionless. Staring at her hands, the mark which still waits beneath her gauntlets, and her rapidly healing wounds, she wonders if the battle with _herself_ is truly over. She’d thought love and the bonds of those surrounding her had made her stronger, a million miles away from her malicious, dragon-god counterpart, but perhaps it had only made her more **dangerous**.

Because she’s never felt more powerful than _when_ she has something to protect.


End file.
